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European lager review

This is review 2 of 3 of the beers that I brewed for my friends’ wedding. This beer is a refinement of the lager I had blogged earlier about here. This beer saw pretty well all the adjustments mentioned in that post, then I went ahead and brewed 100L of it!

I think this beer turned out quite well – the brews went as intended, and the beer turned out without any major flaws. I switched the finishing hops in this recipe from Hallertau Hersbrucker to Saaz, which I think was the right decision. The beer now has a pleasant spiciness to it, without the subtle citrusyness that I detected in the earlier version.

This beer was the first that I bothered to build my water for, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t detect a HUGE difference in beer quality. For the added cost of buying RO water by the jug (about 20 gallons/batch for me), I will likely be selective to which brews I go through the trouble for in the future. For the others, I will return to carbon filtering city water and adjusting for pH as needed. Eventually I may buy a RO unit for brewing and drinking water, but not while my brewery is located in an unheated garage.

This was also the first time I used BioFine Clear. I wanted to make sure these wedding beers were vegan friendly, and I also was drawn by the convenience of it. I don’t think I had the technique down quite right because the beer didn’t achieve the level of clarity I had expected. In all of my other uses of BioFine since, I’ve had very clear beer. I think here I just didn’t agitate it enough when I added it to the fermentor. The beer still tastes great – and I am pleased I still have some on tap. This recipe is suitably dialled in for my tastes, though I may try using some different yeasts in the future. Recipe and picture below!